Readlink

Readlink shows the destination of a symbolic link. For instance, if one has a file named "lsc" which links to "/bin/ls":

$ readlink lsc
/bin/ls

A command that this author has frequently found useful is:

$ readlink filename | awk -F/ '{ print $NF }'

This will print the filename of the file to which the link is pointing. To find the name of the driver of your ethernet card, for example:

$ readlink /sys/class/net/eth0/driver | awk -F/ '{ print $NF }'

Provided by

Most (all?) Linux distributions incorporate this from the GNU Coreutils: man page

Related Commands

• link - Make hard links.
• ln - Make hard or soft links
• mkdir - Make directory nodes.
• mkfifo - Make a named pipe directory entry (aka fifo)
• mknod - Make a device node, or a socket node.
• rmdir - Remove empty directories.
• unlink - Remove directory entries (other than for subdirectories)

See also

• Another man page of readlink
• awk - Scan and process patterns in text.
• User's Guide of GNU Awk (online or downloadable)

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